Homo Box Office: '127 Hours'

After repeatedly failing to get my squeamish lover to go with me, finally saw "127 Hours" last night, along with Scooter and Matt. (Scooter's boyfriend was working and Matt's said he'd rather have his own arm cut off than sit through it.) The movie is nicely done. James Franco, as Aron Ralston, definitely deserves an Oscar nomination, even if I'd award it to Colin Firth for lifetime achievement if not necessarily a stronger performance in "The King's Speech." It's gorgeously filmed and well-paced, despite its claustrophobic setting and (essentially) one-man cast. I loved the montages Danny Boyle employed -- a la "Trainspotting" -- to convey Aron's various stages of distress -- delusions, fantasies, hopes, dreams and fears -- with clever music choices to orchestrate them.

All that said, "127 Hours" truly isn't for everyone -- and I don't just mean pussies like Michael and Jose. For me, rather than inspiring deep sympathy for Aron, the film mainly served to bolster my anti-outdoors edict. (I don't have a problem with someone sawing off his own arm, it's the idea of that someone would intentionally go hiking that bothered me!) I don't suppose you have to want to be or do everything you see in a film for you to feel like it was an exceptional piece of work. But in this case, I walked away feeling like a good article in the Sunday Times Magazine would have sufficed. My grade: B.